posted at 10:11 pm on October 21, 2013 by Mary Katharine Ham

Today, after 10 minutes of sugarcoating, President Obama said he wouldn’t sugarcoat the failures of HealthCare.gov:

But the problem has been that the website that’s supposed to make it easy to apply for and purchase the insurance is not working the way it should for everybody. There’s no sugarcoating it. The website has been too slow. People have getting stuck during the application process. And I think it’s fair to say that nobody’s more frustrated by that than I am. Precisely because the product is good, I want the cash registers to work, I want the checkout lines to be smooth, so I want people to be able to get this great product. And there’s no excuse for the problems. And it’s — these problems are getting fixed.

The “unacceptable” speech is a staple of the Obama presidency. Through gritted teeth, the president acknowledges something he’d rather not, usually something his administration has screwed up royally—Benghazi, the IRS scandal, or the push for intervention in Syria. He detaches himself from the situation and all responsibility for what he’s acknowledging while offering a stern lecture for those who caused the problem— usually someone he hired and under his direct instruction— and promising to get to the bottom of it. He might show a flash of barely contained Spock-Obama anger to send a thrill up the legs of newscasters.

In his “unacceptable” speech on the rolling calamity of Obamacare’s launch, the president didn’t even evince the minute and a half of anger he generally musters for such a speech, until he got to the part about Republicans, but that’s a part of every single speech. This is his legacy! From his point of view, someone (maybe the same person always preventing him from being clear?) is ruining his signature achievement, and we got a surreal campaign speech instead of any real reckoning with the problems before him.

Many have wondered what that means. Does the president know how deep the problems run (5 million lines of code to be rewritten, according to the NYT)? Does the HealthCare.gov team even know what the problems are? Are they trying to buy time to assess? Without any sense of urgency, can this possibly be fixed in time to prevent its implosion?

The only thing Obama has ever run well is a tech-centric campaign that knows how to build a hell of a website. How could he let this happen, some wonder? Two thoughts on that. One, Obama assumed that building a tech system to support Obamacare would look like building his campaign did without recognizing that working within government, complying with its regulations, and deploying with the flexibility of peanut brittle was fundamentally different from launching tech products for a small, private organization built to be flexible from hour to hour on the campaign trail. Ironically, Obama’s very successful tech-centric campaign also further hampered the efforts to build HealthCare.gov and state exchanges by putting off setting regulations, rules, and specs until post-election, when they couldn’t be used as ammunition against him.

Two, I think Obama thinks when he says things, they just happen. There’s no small part of his entire candidacy and presidency founded on a sort of magical thinking. His presence would fix Washington even as he did nothing to fix it and exacerbated many of its worst features. His words would heal our divides and probably the ocean. It’s not surprising that his signature law would be animated by a lot of the same. He said “Travelocity for health care,” didn’t he?

He said Benghazi’s perpetrators would be brought to justice, didn’t he? He said the IRS acted inappropriately, didn’t he? Problem solved.

The pattern should make Obamacare supporters very nervous about whether this thing can be fixed quickly. Since when has something the president called “unacceptable” ever been brought to a satisfactory conclusion? Each of these things has been put into the “Keystone” holding pattern. If past is prelude, the president will perpetually be “gathering facts,” “acting deliberately,” and giving stern speeches about continued Obamacare website problems. And, by the way, firing no one.

Transparency and accountability aren’t actually just buzz words. They’re a way to make sure bad things don’t happen over and over again. The president showed no indication he wants to fix the problem with his legacy law today, and no matter what he tells you, his opponents are under no obligation to help him pick up the pieces. Unless he believes his mere words solve the problem, he did near nothing to fix things today. Of course, this would not be, as the president likes to say, “unprecedented.”

In the meantime, all of the people who’ve been calling us liars for three years will now be insistent that we stop talking about Obamacare’s problems and become part of the solution, man. If they’d stopped blindly believing in the power of big government to do big things a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, they might have actually heard some of our criticisms and been able to correct the problem. But they opted for “Attack Watch.”

A couple thoughts for those who tweet that I should stop talking about Obamacare's problems and become part of the solution.

Blowback

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Based on NSA data from domestic spying. Not directly, mind you but West Wing staff gets stuff from NSA which happens to find its way to the OFA database which everybody says was so awesome they couldn’t figure out how it was pulled off. We know now. Unless the myth of some lesbian activist and other grassroots volunteers tattling on their neighbors can explain the depth of the OFA database.

How in the world are you suppose to be part of the solution? Most of us are on our knees hoping that our policies are intact and we will be spared any interaction with program from Hell. It’s not bad enough we are having to pay for it and repay for it but now they want us to smile. Not likely.

(CNSNews.com) – Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) calls Obamacare a “very small and modest bill,” even though he previously said he failed to see the point in reading it “if it’s a thousand pages” and required lawyers to decipher it.

During an Oct. 17 appearance on “Democracy Now!” Conyers criticized lawmakers who had partially shut down the government in the fight against Obamacare, expressing concern about what might happen when a single-payer system is proposed.

“It’s just unimaginable the actions they would turn to, to get their way on a very small and modest bill – Obamacare. We’re talking about universal health care for everybody – single payer, that’s what the new direction is,” Conyers said.

But “small and modest” were not the adjectives used by Conyers to describe Obamacare on July 24, 2009. That day, Conyers told the audience at the National Press Club there was little good in even reading a bill “if it’s a thousand pages.”

“I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill,’” Conyers said. “What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

As CNSNews.com has reported, bureaucracies in the Obama Administration have thus far published approximately 11,588,500 words of final Obamacare regulations.

I should stop talking about Obamacare’s problems and become part of the solution.

I particularly love this riff. That anybody who hates Obamacare is not trying to be part of the solution.

By the same token, Patrick Henry would be advised to shut up and support King George III’s policies. Abolutionists would be advised to shut up and support pro-slavery policies. German Jews in 1936 would be told to shut up and support Hitler’s vision.

The immediate collapse helps them insist Single Payer is needed. The correction. They want this bad Mary Katharine. I have to think everything they are doing is intentional.

Bmore on October 21, 2013 at 10:31 PM

Here’s the problem with your theory Bmore.

Going from world-class healthcare to single payer has to come in steps. Immediate collapse to Obamacare doesn’t do that. A system that can’t even enroll people into mandatory healthcare isn’t capable of single payer. They’ve at least got to get a sham version of Obamacare up and running before they kill it in favor of Obamacare.

Next year’s elections to the European parliament also look like a possible breakthrough moment for a European Tea Party. The parliament has traditionally been the most federalist institution in Europe, acting as a lobby group for the transfer of more powers to Brussels. But next May’s elections are likely to show a surge in votes for eurosceptic parties across the continent. It is quite feasible that the National Front will top the polls in France, that the Freedom party will win in the Netherlands and that Ukip will be the biggest single bloc from Britain.

What almost all Europe’s anti-establishment parties share with the Tea Party, however, is an anti-elitist rhetoric that casts mainstream politicians as the servants of a remote, globalised elite. Another central theme that unites most of Europe’s anti-establishment parties with the Tea Party is resentment of immigration. When mainstream politicians say – correctly – that their ability to curb immigration is constrained by EU rules on free movement of people, they merely fuel populist rage at “out of touch” elites.

The article is in no way supportive of the TEA Party or any offshoots in Europe, but the mention of a rising TEA party wave in Europe is encouraging.

True its a hard sell. Its easy to deem them incompetent. Almost too easy. They have spent many, many years preparing to overtake this sector. They feel they have it at last. I fear they may have as well. Its partly why I supported Cruz on his move to kill it. Last stops do sometimes get missed. Fingers crossed that I’m wrong. ; ) Now to the important stuff. Any good photos to share. : ) Sorry, couldn’t resist. Lolz!

while your here MKH…great post..
sounds like a rough morning for you…
also, another great spot on bill’s show tonight..
however…you do know…Juan is never going to get it…
bless your lil heart for trying…
but Juan is going to need O-care for his back..
for all the water he is carring on this topic alone..

King Barack believes that he can FIX all just by the mere magnificence of His voice.

ObamaCare would probably be easier to fix if THEY FIRST REMOVED OBAMA’S EGO FROM THE PROBLEM.

GarandFan on October 21, 2013 at 10:29 PM

Heh. Reminds me of the line from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Zaphod Beeblebrox, the Galactic President, when challenged about his ego, responded something like “If there’s anything more important than my ego around here, I want it captured and shot“.

They’ve at least got to get a sham version of Obamacare up and running before they kill it in favor of Obamacare.

Happy Nomad on October 21, 2013 at 10:37 PM

That is exactly right as I see it. Keep in mind. Its not my theory. Its merely my interpretation of their actions. They are the ones running with this perverted path to Single Payer. That makes it doubly hard for someone like me to understand them in the first place. I think completely differently than they. I still haven’t read all that’s in it. Since they passed it that is. ; )

O has the same “magic” FDR had… he just talks a lot, pretends he’s working hard for the people, spends like drunken sailor, gets angry at businesses for not hiring as he punishes success… and nothing improves… yet the LIV are convinced that he cares about them and that the whole mess is somehow not his fault.

What do you do once he fixes the website and enrolls millions into ObamaCare, congratulate him? He’s already got the snotty laugh-line memorized: ‘They complained when we weren’t enrolling people fast enough and now they are complaining that we’re enrolling millions! You just can’t please these right wingers!’

Obama is a socialist, but thank god he is a incompetent socialist. Up to know he has been lucky in that his incompetence had little direct impact or at least not visible to the majority of Americans.

Now he can’t hide, this thing is named after him. It is his legacy and his only real accomplishment. It was the only thing he HAD to get right.

Because the shut down took place, and the way it ended, Obama can’t delay it now, he can’t cave. It is put up or shut up time…and I am gambling he can’t put up because he is not competent enough to get it done. That is why Cruz won, Obama’s ego will not allow him to delay now.

Based on NSA data from domestic spying. Not directly, mind you but West Wing staff gets stuff from NSA which happens to find its way to the OFA database which everybody says was so awesome they couldn’t figure out how it was pulled off. We know now. Unless the myth of some lesbian activist and other grassroots volunteers tattling on their neighbors can explain the depth of the OFA database.

Happy Nomad on October 21, 2013 at 10:23 PM

This.

I wish people were connecting these dots more and discussing this. There is no longer any mystery as to how the Obama campaign was so tech-savvy and had such great information, etc.

Our best hope lay with the near future elections. We are left to gain The Senate and keep The House. The equivalent of stopping at the next station. Crossing the tracks and heading back one stop. Short of that it is done.

Plus you don’t help the cause of big government by making it look expensive, annoying, and incompetent. Even the idiots who want free stuff realize that. Lazy people don’t have the patience for ObamaCare…it is too much work!

well BHO’s ego would not let him take the house deal..
the number two one…delay..
BHO could have taken option 2 and blamed the whole
deal on the evil right wing…
then taken that time to get his web site in line..
“Obama’s ego will not allow him to delay now.”
agreed…

The easiest software bugs to find and fix are the ones that do dramatic things, like crash the system. It’s the subtle ones that quietly corrupt the data that are hard to deal with – hard to document, hard to repeat, hard to find.

Unfortunately, the bar is always set so low for Barky that all they have to do is fix the obvious crash-n-burn problems. The press will be orgasmic. Hey, the Turn-around Kid! Later on, corrupted data and lost-security issues will simply not be talked about. Pffft. Out of sight, out of mind. Never happened. The costs in dollars and human suffering will be enormous, but unspoken.

And that’s the upbeat scenario. The bad one just hustles us straight to irrevocable single-payer as the “sensible” response to an unfixable problem.

Our best hope lay with the near future elections. We are left to gain The Senate and keep The House. The equivalent of stopping at the next station. Crossing the tracks and heading back one stop. Short of that it is done.

Bmore on October 21, 2013 at 10:59 PM

I happen to think we passed that ‘last stop’ a few stops ago, unfortunately. I honestly don’t have any hope that future elections are going to do us any better than the last few have. The media isn’t even trying to put up any pretense of being unbiased and are actively, overtly and enthusiastically making sure Dems win; Dems know they can simply steal them with impunity (like every other law they’re getting more brazen about flouting); and the sheer weight of no-info voters and treasury-draining entitlement guzzlers is simply too much at this point. I don’t think it can be fixed without a significant crash or two occurring first.

when you say “take the senate”
i know you all hate the current kentucky senator…
would spending hundreds of millions of dollars
be better spent trying to knock out an actual dem in another state..like a michigan or minn??..or..??
we may not like johnny mac or grahamnestey or mcconnell
but its going to take a ton of cash to get em out..

As an Obamacare opponent who is now supposed to fix the whole thing, here goes:

1. Repeal the Affordable Care Act.

2. Require each state to offer Basic and Essential Health Insurance modeled after the one New Jersey must discontinue in 2014 because it doesn’t meet the Obamacare requirements.

3. Offer health insurance tax credits to Americans with low income.

Assuming the other states can just copy the Jersey model that served 100,000 people they should be able to get this up and running by January 1 if they scrap all the money they are wasting on the Obamacare project and put it toward this.

As far as I can tell this is cheaper and more feasible than any liberal/Democrat proposal around.

Obama is in Banzai mode. Now that he is, conservatives need to find a intelligent position to mow them down. Sadly the GOP leadership will probably do something stupid like push amnesty to distract Obama and the media from the suicide charge they are about to make. Don’t take the bait.

The Republicans need to put off the “amnesty wars” for another time, hopefully forever, or at least convince the pro-amnesty wing of the GOP this is not the time. Amnesty will just divide this party more not less, and why do it right now? Latinos will have little impact on the elections in 2014 and 2016…so why not put it off until the GOP runs the presidency? Right? Convince them to wait for post 2016…tell them Christie will win, hopefully he will not but let them believe that he will, anything to get them off this fixation they have with pushing amnesty right now.

I happen to think we passed that ‘last stop’ a few stops ago, unfortunately. I honestly don’t have any hope that future elections are going to do us any better than the last few have. The media isn’t even trying to put up any pretense of being unbiased and are actively, overtly and enthusiastically making sure Dems win…

Midas on October 21, 2013 at 11:05 PM

Spot on. We are losing the demographic battle as well. With progressives controlling education, we cannot hope that the upcoming new voters (the legal ones) will be anything other than fully-trained Obots. They’ve been patiently building this machine for a hundred years. Now its brought them to critical mass, and they are, for sure, all in.

No room in my heart for hate of any of them. I just want them gone. New more faithful Men and Women to step up. The people must want it as well. So far just a modest change. Look at the scorched earth rhetoric directed at us from with in our own Party. Not to mention the enemy. Took a long time to get here. Even longer to correct, if at all even possible at this point.

What if they decided to use the existing framework of Medicare…just expanding and integrating the new regulations.

Pelosi once floated the idea of “Medicare for everyone.” during the health care reform debate in 2009.

thatsafactjack on October 21, 2013 at 10:42 PM

Medicare has a stigma to it as a name if you declare you want to enroll everybody.

The bigger problem is that whole integrating and expanding thing. It’s not so easy.

I was once part of a project attempting to change a small part of Medicaid SSI patients to a different model. There was a lot of political resistance but there were also legal obstacles in doing so. I don’t see Congress allowing those changes.

im with you on more faithful honest men and women,,
DC is a numbers town…at 45-55 were short 4, 5, 6 maybe 7…
with a viewpoint of 30-70 we need to pick
up 25 senate races…and that aint going to happen..
we dont have cash or votes to pull that off..

you will spend a ton of cash trying to dislodge
a rino…
would it not be better to look at other races??
other places??..
isnt Carl Levin in Michigan about to retire?
spend some anti johnny mac money there and try
and gain a seat…??im just asking

Sounds about right to me. We don’t have nearly enough small government Conservatives in Senate, heIIfire the house for that matter. The pendulum will swing, just a little less each time. The GOP is frail, near failure I think. Its why I find the current occupants wanting. New blood and fast I guess is what I’m saying. Before the final bleed out. Time, never enough time, ; )

All of them should face a solid primary opponent. Both sides of the isle. D’s need to be beaten first of course. My concern is that many are unseatable due to a number of factors not the least of which is the voting public. Not too pinchy smart many of them. Sad and true.

I happen to think we passed that ‘last stop’ a few stops ago, unfortunately. I honestly don’t have any hope that future elections are going to do us any better than the last few have. The media isn’t even trying to put up any pretense of being unbiased and are actively, overtly and enthusiastically making sure Dems win; Dems know they can simply steal them with impunity (like every other law they’re getting more brazen about flouting); and the sheer weight of no-info voters and treasury-draining entitlement guzzlers is simply too much at this point. I don’t think it can be fixed without a significant crash or two occurring first.

Midas on October 21, 2013 at 11:05 PM

Yep.
Think of the country as that pro football player’s house that got taken over and trashed by that mob of teenagers.
But this time picture the teenagers setting the place on fire after they were done partying.
That’s where we are now.

What do you expect from a lazy no-good SOB who has never worked a day in his life in the private sector and has never been accountable for anything expect getting inflated grades from his college professors and accolades from his fawning grandparents?…

Well, I see that you decided to compile your tweets into a post. That’s okay, it was worth seeing twice. Now it’s time to get back to the rebuttals which will consist of “why do you hatey-hate-hate this black president’s desire to help everyone, you racist??” and other helpful comments.